Graecus

Part of speech: adjective, noun

Definitions

1. Relating to ancient Greece or its people ; connected to the Greek language or culture ; pertaining to the historical region of Greece or its traditions
2. Associated with Greece in classical or historical contexts ; descriptive of the language spoken by the Greeks ; referring to customs or artifacts originating from Greece
3. Denoting origin from Greece or Hellenic heritage ; linked to the Greek tongue or linguistic features ; related to the culture, history, or geographic area of Greece

Etymology: Graecus is the Latin word for a Greek, and its English descendants came by a surprising route. The Romans did not call the Greeks by a word that sounded like "Greek" at all. The name came from the Greeks' neighbours in Epirus, the Graeci, a people whose name the Romans extended to all Greeks, and the Greeks themselves called their country "Hellas" and themselves "Hellenes." English never took the word directly as an everyday term; it arrived mostly as a scholarly adjective in forms like "Graecian" and "Graeco-" compounds. The Latin word "graecus" was borrowed into English in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as a learned term, used by scholars writing about classical texts. Its most lasting English descendant is "Greek" itself, which came through Old English "Grēc" from the same Latin source. Modern English uses "Graeco-" as a combining form, so you see it in words like "Graeco-Roman" for wrestling styles and the "Graeco-Latin square" in statistics.

Synonyms: Greek, Hellenic

Antonyms: non-Greek